


No More Shame (Give It a New Name)

by torches



Category: Akira - Fandom
Genre: Character of Color, F/M, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-10
Updated: 2009-09-10
Packaged: 2017-10-09 14:08:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/88288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torches/pseuds/torches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>They make love in the burned-out skeletons of old Neo-Tokyo</i>: Kei and Kaneda, after the beginning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No More Shame (Give It a New Name)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merfilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/gifts).



1\. Kei and Kaneda live in a smaller world after it's all over. A brighter, more violent world, and in some respects a harder one. It's a larger version of Kaneda's world, and one he takes to readily - burned and shaped by the horrors he's seen into something almost responsible, he takes care of thousands of men, women and children and makes it look almost effortless. But Kei was a product of a larger world than the one she now shares with the man she didn't expect to love, and in some ways the messiness of it all starts to eat at her in ways she doesn't know how to cope with. Killing is easy for Kei. It shouldn't be, she can hear Ryu saying (but he's dead), but it's the truth. It's this hard, scrabbling business of forming a _life_ that drives her nuts.

So sometimes she takes the spare bike, hikes out into the wreckage, and loses herself in the noise of waves.

It takes a couple days, but Kaneda always comes to find her. Every time. Even after the first few times, once he knows she's not leaving forever.

They make love in the burned-out skeletons of old Neo-Tokyo, and afterwards she holds him close and feels him shake under her arms, and is grateful they both have an excuse to run away when they need to.

2\. Kei always thought she would end up with Ryu as "the one". It's not really a secret between them. She told Kaneda this one night, laughing, as they shared warm cans of Yebisu and let foam dribble down their fingers and she poured beer all over her palm and jerked him off with the smell of booze filling their nostrils: "I used to dream of doing this to Ryu, when I was younger," as she bends over him and feels him shudder in her hands; later, as he licks off her fingers, raking his teeth over each knuckle, he says: "Yeah, but you're doing it to me," and they meet each other halfway and only pull back when they can both feel the bruise.

She laughs.

Honestly, she thinks fucking Kaneda will always be better than sleeping with Ryu only felt like in her head.

3\. They aren't like that. All that "you're the only one" bullshit. They _work_. They're fun. And if there were anyone better they'd be with them. But Kei likes him. She brings out the bits of him that make him feel fucking _proud_, like he ain't some sort of ... society reject with delusions of grandeur and he's actually worth something to these people, that he can lead people somewhere other than straight to hell, and he digs into her when they're alone like he can take that feeling and pound it into his flesh until it reaches his beating heart.

But it isn't just about that. It's that he thinks he's the first person who's ever made her laugh that damn hard. That he's the first person she's ever been _scared_ for, from the very beginning, before they were who they have to be now - back when she was the cold, crazy, hardcore terrorist and he was just a street punk with a good-luck streak a mile wide - back when his ghost showed up and scared the shit out of both of them.

That was big. It wasn't like this, where so much of everything comes down to food, and pills, and keeping people in clothes and warmth and safety. That's a different kind of big. That kind of big makes him feel like rock down to his toes, because if he doesn't then he'll fall over and break.

The other kind of big - Akira big, Tetsuo big, half-of-the-city-falling-from-the-sky big - that just makes him feel about ten inches tall in the face of a tsunami.

He can't face both kinds of big at the same time. (Good thing he's never fucking _had_ to.)

It makes him feel - fucking helpless and responsible at the same time.

But there's Kei. And she - he doesn't have to think about either of those things with her. He's never had to be responsible for her, to take care of her, to - be horrified of her. (Scared of her, yeah. The first time she phased through a wall, no _shit_.) She just _is_. And that's really what it comes down to. He doesn't have to be anything for her. She can handle herself, and she sticks around. And she makes him fucking laugh his _ass_ off.

That's all there is to it.

He watches her sleep, and he can't imagine being with anyone else. Fucking anyone else would just be _disappointing_, after all Kei gives him to love.

4\. Kei crashes three bikes before she learns how to do it right, but it's worth it, because she doesn't want to ride on Kaneda's back forever, even if it makes her feel tight and hot deep in her gut.

Kaneda isn't even upset, he's so fucking stoked she wants to _learn_; he keeps fixing the ones she wrecks in case she wants to use one of those. (Besides, Kaneda crashed his bike five times when he started learning; shit happens, seriously.) It's driving Joker insane, but like hell Kaneda cares; as far as Kaneda's concerned, Joker was his bitch before he ruled the world and a little added responsibility isn't changing _Joker's_ position any.

The first time she manages, she lets out a howl that makes Kaisuke's hair stand _on end_, and Kaneda joins her with a whoop two seconds later. They chase each other down alleys and over rubble, headlights leaving gold and red trails around cracked streetcorners, their engines and their shrieks filling the empty spaces with life and high-octane lust.

They stop at the edge of the world, staring down cliffs made of cleaved office buildings and shopping malls, down into the man-made sea.

Kei jerks him off and they both laugh at the thought of his sperm flying down, down, down till it hits the ocean, and then swimming off through the cold water. "My jizz is as hard to kill as I am!" he shouts into the void, and grins as his echo comes back to him.

Kei smacks him in the back of his head and laughs.

5\. When they're old enough, they leave. The Empire's in other, better, younger hands now, and they've made it strong and fertile; if it fails now, it won't be their fault for not giving it a good start.

They take their bikes and ride off into the parts of Neo-Tokyo the Empire still hasn't colonized or repaired, with enough food for several months and their wits. They fight rats and anything else that threatens them in the places where no human has been in decades, and they still make love like they might forget how to breathe.

Sometimes kids - they're old enough now even men and women older than they were when the Empire was founded are "kids" now - brave the wilderness to visit them in their secluded retirement home, and they greet them, and serve them cooked bird, fish, and rat; sometimes deer, now that the wildlife of the rest of Japan has started to trickle back across the city limits.

And then, one day, after years of time and life, they die, and the next children of their brave new world to make the pilgrimage to their home find Kei and Shotaro Kaneda in death as they were in life: happy, together, and in the throes of the best fucking sex they could ever have.

They're buried with the biggest pomp and ceremony the Great Tokyo Empire can manage, and at the end of the funeral march they lay their bodies down in graves marked only with wooden planks ... right next to, and the same as, Akira's empty grave, the keepers of their country's spirit until their deaths and even beyond.


End file.
